The following article was selected from the Internet Edition of the Chicago Tribune. To visit the site, point your browser to http://chicagotribune.com/. ----------- Chicago Tribune Article Forwarding---------------- Article forwarded by: Cayata Dixon Return e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Article URL: http://chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/article/0,2669,ART-51932,FF.html ---Forwarded article---------------- Schools cut staff to hire hundreds of teachers By Ray Quintanilla The Chicago Public Schools system plans to cut its central office workforce by 16 percent next month to raise $22 million to hire hundreds of new teachers in fall, officials confirmed Monday. Cutting 400 jobs is the first step of a shake-up of Chicago schools, fueled in part by Mayor Richard Daley's admonition to schools chief Paul Vallas and Board of Education President Gery Chico to increase the pace of academic progress. A reorganization of senior level staff in the central office is expected to follow soon. Three hundred of the 400 job cuts will be achieved by layoffs. The remaining 100 cuts will come from openings that will not be filled, Vallas said. "We have to do this for the good of the system," Vallas said. "This is going to be good for schools." The specifics of the layoffs will be announced Tuesday, when Vallas and Chico unveil the system's proposed budget for the 2001-02 school year. During budget planning, officials discovered a $75 million shortfall in the $4.38 billion budget. During Tuesday's announcement, though, officials said they will once again propose raising property taxes to the maximum allowed under tax caps to help make up the shortfall and bring the budget into balance. The savings from job cuts will be diverted to hire 500 new teachers, positions that Vallas said are needed to keep pace with rising enrollment. Additionally, a portion of the funds will be used to pay for 300 teachers the school system hired last year to improve reading in 125 of the system's most underperforming schools. This also will allow summer school to be expanded, Vallas said. Truancy program hit At least 30 of the eliminated jobs will come from leaders of the system's anti-truancy effort, which costs about $1 million per year. It is expected that schools with chronic truancy problems, some of which have experimented with hiring parents to track down absent students, will receive that money to continue local anti-truancy programs. Some money will be earmarked to pay for about 70 reading and math specialists who would focus on improving reading and algebra in underperforming schools, Vallas said. The school system's central office employs between 2,500 and 3,000 employees, though only about 1,200 are administrators who work downtown at the main headquarters building. About half of the jobs being eliminated are held by staffers with master's degrees, officials said. Some of those are officials overseeing the truancy effort. Blondean Davis, chief of schools and regions for the public schools, said shifting anti-truancy work to parents has had promising results in recent years. But there will a period of transition because many of the people who will be let go have expertise in social work and child development. Some are former teachers, she said. "If children do not come to school on a regular basis, there's a reason for that," she said. "The parent representative's strengths have been in being welcomed in the home." Watchdog sees positives Leaders of the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group, a non-profit watchdog organization, said the school system's announcement is "generally positive." But Jacqueline Leavy, the group's executive director, said she worries that many of the people who will lose their jobs next month may eventually end up on the payroll again. "When Vallas first took over the schools they cut lots of positions, and they ended up coming back as permanent consultants," Leavy said. Leavy said the financial picture for Chicago's schools will continue to look bleak unless the system can find the money to meet the needs of a 430,000-student system with aging school buildings. Her group estimates that will take $2.5 billion. State help suggested Leavy said the Board of Education has strapped itself with nearly $5 billion in debt to fund capital improvements to schools, and the cost of borrowing is a strain on the system's finances. She said school leaders must ask the state's political leaders for more money. "If Mayor Daley and Gov. Ryan can make a deal to raise money for McCormick Place, why can't they do the same for schools where our children are," she said. Tribune education reporter Michael Martinez contributed to this report. ---------------------------------------------------- This is the CPS Mathematics Teacher Discussion List. To unsubscribe, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://home.sprintmail.com/~mikelach/subscribe.html>. To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/science%40lists.csi.cps.k12.il.us/>
